Monday, 14 November 2011

Yes Dear! Of Course Atheism Is A Religion.

One of the more bizarre accusations theists, and especially creationists, level at atheists is that atheism is a religion and requires faith.

It's almost as though they believe if only they can persuade people this is true it will somehow justify their religious faith whilst simultaneously disproving the atheist position that there is no evidence for any god and so no reason to believe in one.

One wonders if they've actually thought about this or if, as seems more likely, they are simply mindlessly parroting some charlatan or other who is obviously supplying them, probably for money, with the spurious rationalisations they crave to maintain their infantile belief in magic. These people don't seem able to work out that if they could discredit atheism by calling it a religion or saying you need faith to be one, they are also discrediting their own superstition.

They seem quite capable of holding two diametrically opposite views of religion and faith simultaneously: that religions and faith are false therefore atheism must be because it's a religion, etc., and that religion and faith is the only way to determine ultimate truth and of acquiring unquestionable knowledge and understanding of the world.

Quetalcoatl.

And of course, they are capable of holding diametrically opposite views simultaneously. Indeed, they pride themselves in their ability to do it. This is an essential mechanism for self-delusion. This is precisely why they are religious in the first place.

A whole industry has grown up supplying them with books and on-line articles (with the give-away 'donate' button conspicuously displayed) providing them with the arguments, lies, deceptions and mental techniques required to do so. Many people earn a very good living supplying this industry and assiduously maintaining through fear and misinformation, the ignorance upon which it depends.

So, how much 'faith' does it take to not believe in Zeus or Ra, or the thousands of other gods which different people at different times have believed in with just the same level of evidence as exists for the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Shinto or Hindu god or gods? How much of a religion is not believing in Wotan, or not believing in Quetzalcoatl?

The answer, of course, is none at all. It takes no more faith to not believe in Apollo or Horus than it takes to not believe in some god once believed in by Amazonian Indians or New Guinea Highlanders of whom no one alive now has ever heard.

It takes no more faith to not believe in those gods than to not believe in Yahweh, the god of an insignificant tribe of Bronze Age nomadic pastoralist marauders whose god just happened to be taken up by the ruling class of a declining Iron Age Roman Empire, who could equally well have adopted any other of the many mythical gods then on offer, leaving Yahweh to sink into the obscurity of myth, or maybe to be forgotten altogether, the way so may gods have done in the past.

Surely the charlatans who feed these unfortunate simpletons this pap can come up with something just a LITTLE more intelligent than "It takes too much faith to be an atheist!", and "Atheism is a religion!" for them to trumpet under the sad delusion that it shows deep wisdom instead of revealing their shallow stupidity.

Surely they can think up some slogan which makes their victims look just a little more intelligent and just slightly less thick than two short planks. Or can't they? Maybe that would be asking the impossible.

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Atheism is an - ism , like communism, socialism, faschism etc... so it is a belief.Allah is another word for God.The Islam faith beliefs are the same as ours where God is concerned.There is only one God.But we part ways where love is concerned. Jesus hated cruelty and he came to teach people what love was so man does not kill man.Muhhammad on the other hand teaches to kill any one not muslim so peace can reign . He believes people with different beliefs cannot live together.So all the other -isms are on his list to either annihilate or turn to Islam.This is almost akin to Hitlers' desire for an Aryan Race of people with pure blood.Equally insane.No matter who you are or what you believe or don't believe, there is no escape.Eventually you will have to defend yourself against evil.That's just the way it is.

Any further abuse of this blog to spout your bigotry will be deleted. Please have the common decency to not do the cyber equivalent of taking a dump on someone else's living room carpet. Even Christian are expected to behave in a civilised manner here.

Ofcourse there is only one true God. His name is Quetzalcoatl and he shall punish every single judeo-christian fool that is too ignorant to acknowledge his great and awsome fury. All hail the Feathered Serpent! He shall return!

So cannibalism, another -ism, is a belief according to you. Last time I looked in a dictionary, it was described as a behaviour. Please note this it was not described as a belief. Given that your initial premiss is flawed, the rest of your argument falls.

You can argue until the cows come home. It is interesting that you are allowed to bash people with your own belief yet when someone explains you call it bigotry. There is nothing more hypocritical than an "evangelizing" atheist. No better than the rest of the people who love to oppress and suppress freedom of other people's right. It is everyone's right to have their own belief. When you talk about respect I believe you should start by example.

If you want to be different than act out with compassion & love. We all have got better things to do at the end of the day. Cheers!

I assume this is aimed at me since I am the only person to use the term 'bigotry'. You may have noticed that the person to whom it was address did not deal with the subject of the blog - Atheism and Faith - but with it being a belief on the fallacious grounds that an '-ism' is a belief. This was of course merely an excuse for dumping a load of anti-Islamic, pro-Christian bigotry.

A belief in the scientific sense - the one normal people use in every-day life - is knowledge. I know a stone will fall to earth when dropped because I know about gravity and the experience of observation is that it always does. This is not the same thing as faith, which is belief without evidence or even despite evidence to the contrary.

I note that you regard people expressing a view different to yours as 'bashing' you. Presumably you would wish to stop this but continue to 'bash' others with your beliefs. It is precisely to stop those who seek to restrict freedom of expression for others but to reserve it for themselves that Atheists and Humanists, and people who believe in freedom of conscience, campaign against religious bigotry based, as it is, on evidence-free belief i.e. the arrogant assumption that you must be right for no other reason than because you believe it and that somehow that gives you the right to place yourself above others and to dictate what they may or may not say and do.

As Jesus is God (John 10:30) (Rev 1:17) your suggestion that he hated cruelty are demonstrably fallacious. As many acts of cruelty were perpertrated by him according to the bible, such as flooding the earth (Gen:6:7) or demanding rebellious children to be stoned to death (Deut 21:18)sending bears to maul a group of children (2 Kings 2:23-24)We all too often hear the excuse "Oh, thats the old testament! But that claim is shot down by simply directing them to (Mat 5:17/Luke 16:17/Josh 1:8)once more we are told that "Law of the lord is perfect" (Psalm 19:17) This hardly seems perfecct to me, how about you?Your evocation of Godwins law is rediculous as Hitler was Roman Catholic and in his judgement was 'Doing God's work'

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